Victim of the SPLC

The ludicrously misnamed Southern Poverty Law Center has become a scam operating as a left-wing hate cult. The SPLC specializes in directing something far beyond the Orwellian Two Minutes Hate to the likes of Charles Murray and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others it designates for opprobrium as “extremists” or a “hate group.” Where once was Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers is now Murray, Ali and a host of others guilty of thoughtcrime.

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In the column linked above Ms. Ali notes that the SPLC has hit the jackpot in the aftermath of the violence in Charlottesville that left one woman dead and 19 injured. It “is set to receive millions of dollars in donations” from Apple, JPMorgan Chase and others. John noted Apple’s $1 million pledge to the SPLC last week; Apple will also match employee donations to the SPLC on a two-for-one basis.

I have been calling the ludicrously misnamed Southern Poverty Law Center a wealthy left-wing hate cult. The organization now serves as a handmaiden to forces of the left as they seek to stigmatize honorable conservatives and confine our public discourse to approved channels. Most recently, Minnesota Senator Al Franken showed how it’s done in his crude McCarthyite assault on Notre Dame Law Professor Amy Barrett in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on her nomination to the Seventh Circuit last week.

I didn’t realize that I was following in the footsteps of former Vanderbilt political science professor Carol Swain, who called the SPLC’s number in a post she wrote about it for the Huffington Post in September 2009. Professor Swain concluded the post: “Rather than monitoring hate groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center has become one.”

There is an obvious disconnect when an African-American from the south rises from extreme poverty to glittering scholarly success, only to be branded an “apologist for white supremacists” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Before leveling such a charge against anyone, the SPLC better have the goods, and this applies with extra force in the case of Carol Swain.

The SPLC doesn’t have them on Swain, as her Wall Street Journal piece shows. All it has is a hard-left ideology, a willingness to smear those with whom it disagrees, and lots of money.